Jake Gyllenhaal - I want to do this for a really long time

In September 2002, both Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal were at the Toronto Film Festival publicising their new films - for Maggie it was Secretary and, for Jake, Moonlight Mile. This week, new photographs from the Moonlight Mile press conference have been brought into the light by iheartjake, a state of affairs that is not only to be celebrated in its right, but also because it in turn helped to unearth a gem of an interview between co-stars Susan Sarandon and Jake.


Susan chose to interview/promote/advise The Next Big Thing in August of 2002 in New York. The interview began, not a little strangely but for good, practical reasons, in the ladies bathroom of Manhattan's Man Ray restaurant. The steady trickle, if you pardon the expression, of women keen to come and meet the young man they are assured (by Susan) will be a household name finally drives the pair back to Susan's house where they continue in relative peace.

So what do they talk about? Jake recalls Dustin Hoffman coming to see Jake perform on stage in London in The Days of Our Youth earlier that year: "He didn't call me - he just came to the play. In the middle of the intermission, the fireman who watches over the theater came in and said, "Dustin Hoffman is in the audience." I was so nervous I ended up hamming up the second act." Another woman enters the bathroom at that point. Jake reveals that he was in talks with Bernardo Bertolucci about a role in The Dreamers, and there were plenty of contractural clauses about nudity, which said, according to Jake: "You're going to show your penis, you're going to show your whatever." No need for me to tell you, this didn't come off.


This reminds Jake of Maggie's role in Secretary: "She's amazing in it. She's totally naked in the film, but in a very beautiful kind of way." But was it weird to see his sister naked? "Yeah. The story's beautiful and I recognize it as a plot point, but it's still uncomfortable." Warming to her theme, Susan asks Jake if he was naked with Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl. "In our sex scenes I spent most of my time covering her breasts." Susan: "That's a tough job, huh?" "A tough, tough job" Jake agrees.


Jake tells the now famous story of Paul Newman, someone Susan admires enormously, teaching him to drive when Jake was only 15 years old. The mother in Susan is horrified to hear from Jake that "He was driving the car and he threw me in the passenger's seat and with his glasses dangling from his ear, he started driving on the track towards a brick wall. [Sarandon gasps again] We're 100 feet from a wall, going 60 miles-per-hour, and he hits the brake and turns the wheel, and the car spins three times. So then he turns to me and goes, "That was what you don't do." "



Horrified myself to hear of Jake in such peril, it's a relief when Jake turns to more serious reflection on why he is attracted to certain material. "I think that more and more there's a sense that the best performances I can give are the ones that are the truest to who I am. The further I move away from who I am, the worse they are... And I think the closer I get to myself, the wider the spectrum of what I can play." Later Jake says "I want to do this for a really long time." And Susan warmly responds "I think you could do it for as long as you want."

Finally, Susan advises the earnest young Jake that he should take a year off from thinking. "Bernardo said that to me!... He said, [in an Italian accent] "You need to take a year off from thinking. Come have sex in my movie!" " That sounds more like it.


Photos from IHJ.